Strike

Jonny Owen reaches the end of his highly personal exploration of the strike and finds out what happened afterwards. Saddled with debt after a year with no wages, mining families now face the closure of their pits and the end of a whole way of life. Jonny asks whether the NUM was doomed to lose from the very beginning. He sifts through the arguments about the lack of a national ballot being the uni...

As the miners and their families celebrate Christmas, desperation is setting in. South Wales NUM leaders are seeing some of their members close to cracking up, and they fear the union will collapse if the drift back to work continues across the British coalfields. They are now barely on speaking terms with their national president, and they begin to manoeuvre behind the scenes to get an organised...

As winter arrives, the striking miners are feeling the pinch. They are getting no strike pay and are surviving on donations of clothing and food. The debts are mounting. There seems little prospect of a deal with the Coal Board over pit closures, and thousands of miners are throwing in the towel and going back to work, with the prospect of a special bonus before Christmas. In south Wales only a fe...

There are efforts behind the scenes to get a deal between the National Union of Mineworkers and the Coal Board to bring the strike to an end. It’s a dark time for Labour leader Neil Kinnock as he tries to persuade both sides to agree on how proposed pit closures should be assessed. He is appalled at Arthur Scargill’s apparent refusal to negotiate. Meanwhile, the law is being used to weaken the NUM...

Nottinghamshire was the flashpoint of the miners' strike – ninety per cent of the men there carried on working, and so their pits carried on mining coal and keeping the lights on across Britain. For the ten per cent who were out on strike, it was a tough time – seeing friends crossing picket lines and lacking the scale of community support that the miners had in South Wales. Presenter Jonny Owen w...

A miner and two photographers remember the violent events of June 18, 1984 at Orgreave. Thousands of police and thousands of miners arrived at the coking works in Rotherham for a set-piece confrontation. The miners wanted to stop the coke from getting to a steelworks, and they were surprised that the police waved them through rather than, as they normally did, trying to prevent them from forming a...

Unofficial picketing brings over 140,000 miners out on strike. Miners families in South Wales know there are tough times ahead but support is solid: within days none of the pits are functioning. It’s a tougher choice for men like John Maddock in Nottinghamshire, where most miners are crossing picket lines and going to work. Women start to organise collections to help sustain their families. Presen...

The miners’ strike of 1984-5 had a profound impact on Britain’s politics, economy and society. For those on strike, and their families, it felt like an existential struggle to save not only their jobs, but their communities, and the life they knew. In this episode, Jonny Owen – who was just 13 and living in Merthyr Tydfil at the time – explores the extraordinary heritage that South Wales miners in...

The 1984-85 miners’ strike was a gamechanger for Britain. For Jonny Owen - who was 13 and growing up in South Wales - it was personal. He seeks to find out what really happened.